Judging a Book by its Trailer: Media Literacy, Viral Advertising and the Novel in a Digital Age

Katherine Fitzpatrick

Those in the publishing industry have long been producers of cultural texts, providing information, entertainment and social commentary through the textual medium of the printed book. Technological advances from the printing press to the development of digital printing have meant the ways in which publishers deliver content to consumers are constantly evolving. Recently, the rapid digitisation of culture has become evident in the publishing industry. Publishers now face a changing market signified by the proliferation of e-readers and easily accessible e-books. Not only is the delivery of content transforming to appeal to increasingly technologically savvy consumers, but the very concept of the book and the way it is marketed to those consumers is changing. Multi-media texts and creative online advertising campaigns are being developed in a bid to bring the book into the digital world. The book trailer exemplifies this attempt to capture the burgeoning digital market through maximising the relationship between printed text and visual understanding. The book trailer has become a powerful advertising tool which both utilises online public forums such YouTube to reach consumers and capitalises on the media literacy of contemporary readers. This article aims to examine the ways the publishing industry has adapted to rapid technological change and increasingly media literate consumers by examining the use of book trailers as viral advertising for printed texts. The article will analyse the relative strengths of book trailers as advertising tools, in particular examining those created for Seth Grahame-Smith’s postmodern appropriations of renowned classic works of fiction.